Grimoire Category + My Stuff

Here is a list of stuff that I wrote at the rogue level and would probably be Grimoire-friendly. When you get the chance, can you review them and add the Grimoire category if they fit nicely (and if they don't, let me know why).

Skill Tricks

Do we have a place for skill tricks on the wiki? I'd like to create one that lets you use str instead of dex when throwing a weapon 1/encounter. --Ghostwheel 12:05, September 28, 2010 (UTC)

Kudos

Just wanting to give props to the fact that when ever i'm reading through a class and someone says "this class is op, i wouldn't let anyone use" you just seem to give them the stock "...read balance points..." and it always makes my day cause it's the last thing they say in the discussion :D Balthuras 05:52, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

Heh, thanks. On one hand, if the person wants to learn then I've given them something to chew on and digest until they understand what we're trying to do here for the most part. On the other hand, if they don't want to learn, then it gives me a way to shut them up, since they generally go, "tl;dr" and go away, while giving us an excuse to tell them to go back and read again if they obviously haven't already. --Ghostwheel 08:51, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

RNG Dickery

I recently read a post that led me to think about things RNG-wise. Basically, the premise is to keep things on the RNG 1-20 by reducing the increases to absolute RNG-based things. Just for this example, let's assume that classes are split into 4 levels; each of these is known as a path. One may either change paths every 4 levels (gaining versatility and ways to do things) or continue on the same path, gaining more powerful options. However, the paths aren't so strong that one must continue the whole way in order to be effective. (Examples include the grimoire rogue, the grimoire tenken, or the grimoire soulknife. Each of these has set ways of dealing damage, and can find more ways to deal damage by multiclassing each other, but the higher-level abilities aren't so game-changing that one has to have them, unlike classes like the tome fighter for example--who's going to give up on Foil Action?)
The second part is that every four levels, a class with low BAB does not get a bonus to attack, a class with medium BAB gets +1 to attack, and a class with high BAB gets +1 BAB. At +2 BAB a character gains a second attack as per the iterative attack variant, with improvements at +3 and +4 BAB. (Perhaps add in a feat that can be taken at most twice which replaces a +1 to attack with +1 BAB.) Rather than having a BAB requirement, feats would require "tiers", kinda like 4e; 1-4 is tier 1, 5-8 is tier 2, 9-12 is tier 3, 13-16 is tier 4, and 17-20 is tier 5. So someone might take two paths of rogue followed by a path of tenken, and then back to continue along the rogue path, which would fill 4 paths in total, or basically their progression up to level 16.
In this way, characters who use attacks go from +0 at level one to +5 at tier five, allowing the use of low-level creatures throughout a character's progression, with power not coming from RNG-dickery, but instead from the amount of damage dealt.
I'm not sure if there's any actual use in this, especially for something like the grimoire system which models RNG-based stuff around what a character would have at level X, keeping everyone on the RNG by having numbers scale accordingly. Does anyone see a use to this? Does it have any redeeming features? Or is it just a waste of time? --Ghostwheel 10:14, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

The parallels to E6 and like variants is observable and I definitely think something like this has merit in theory, though the primary issue I see is that it's a significant enough of a departure from the established material that you can't really market it as D&D d20 (and since that's the audience you're catering to, that's an issue). From a new product perspective the market is favorable in that it's easy to enter with minimal entry cost, but acquiring a large enough user base to make the time invested in the project seem worthwhile might be difficult, unless you really don't care whether people like it or use it (but then, why would you create it?). In short, how much free time to do you have, and are you willing to invest it in something which may or may not have any significant return on investment, material or otherwise? I'd be interested in playing it, however, if you ever got it all together. -- Jota 20:19, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

Thoughts:

It has potential power scale issues and looks likely to break down differences between levels at the high end, but probably be fine on the low end. More linear growth than exponential growth basically, with all of the inherent later advancement issues. Potentially resolvable based on force multiplier breakpoints (multiple attacks, spell level growth, etc.).

The path thing looks like a less granular multiclassing setup, which is fine. It would probably work even better if you got the actual high level additions for the classes instead of starting over for the new class (not the full damage values though), but that might just be my preference for level appropriate actions talking.

It might not stop RNG dickery at all, since this just makes your expected values smaller but does nothing to cap unexpected bonuses. It appears to keep base values close together, however,

The feats tier thing is something I like and have been toying with in various forms for a while now, mostly as a way to make low requirement weak feats cost less as the game goes on to avoid punishing people for having to go back and get them.